It is not uncommon for a new player to do something like “Select profession → Victualler” and then “Select world → Vallis” and then try setting up RIGs (why aren’t they producing enough water) and some FRMs (this is so slow!). When asked in chat, the suggestion is to either COLIQ or radically transform the base into something else.
The suggestion is to reverse the order of selection when starting a new player base. Instead of Profession and then Planet, do Planet and then Profession.
If a player selects Vallis, the suggestion of Metallurgist followed by Constructor and Manufacturer should be the only ones that can be picked. If a player picks Verdant, then only Victualler and Carbon Farmer would be available for initial profession selection.
My take on this is that new players don’t know anything about the planets, so making them choose a planet as the first thing they do would not be an improvement.
When I was new, I read all about the professions and chose the one I wanted most, but when it came to the planet choice, I basically chose randomly. If the planet choice had come first, and then locked out the profession I actually wanted, I would have been confused.
I think you have raised a good point though. There should be some mechanism that prevents new players from making a bad first planet choice. My suggestion would be that depending on the profession chosen, the planet list is then in recommended order. So if the player picked Metallurgist, Vallis is near the top. If they picked Victualler then it’s near the bottom, possibly in a red colour, or with some warning message showing when they select it that says “This planet does not have adequate resources for the selected profession.”
This doesn’t follow very well, as most people pick a profession that appeals to them and have absolutely no clue what the planet details mean for that profession. So it would be more appropriate to increase the ‘Useful’ information on a planet’s sutability for the selected profession.
For example I initially picked Metallurgy on Phobos which has Iron so is obviously a suitable planet. It wasn’t till I got into the game that it became clear that just having Iron present wasn’t sufficient to support the profession. The amount of Iron was too low as were the supporting resources.
On the planet selection screen a ranking of suitable professions would be more helpful for the brand new players. It would also help to have a larger selection of starting planets so we can move away from everyone that picks the same profession starting on the same planet.
What if… you had two columns. All the professions in one column, all the starter worlds in the other.
Professions
Worlds
Faction
Manufacturing
Montem
NEO
Metallurgist
Vallis
NEO
Victualler
Verdant
NEO (outer)
Carbon Farmer
Promitor
IC
Constructor
Proxion
CIS
Fuel Engineer
Gibson
CIS
Katoa
CIS
Deimos
AIC
Phobos
AIC
(I know this isn’t a full list of the starter planets, but it gives an idea).
If you select Verdant first, then Carbon Farmer and Victualler would turn green and the others would turn red.
If you selected Victualler first, then Verdant and Promitor would turn green, Proxion would be yellow and the other starter worlds with low fertility would be red, and those that were not fertile at all would be unable to be selected.
At the bottom of the selector, if you really did click Carbon Farmer and Phobos a message would be at the bottom “this combination of profession and starter is not recommended. Planets that have low fertility or water resources are much more difficult to make into a profitable start.”
The goal would be to have it so that if you said “I want to start in NEO and these are the worlds” and then trying to match a profession to them. Likewise, if you selected a profession first, you would see the good planets to start from and could select one of them.
Having people select Victualler and then Vallis leads to a few days of frustration and a much worse starting expereince than if they had selected Promitor, Verdant, or Proxion (it would be an ok start, just a bit rough with the scarce water, but Etherwind is nearby and the price of water in the CX isn’t bad).
Pick a faction. This determines what planets are available for selection, as you should only be able to pick a planet in or near the space of that faction.
Pick a planet. This determines what jobs are available for selection. If a certain planet is unavailable due to faction choice, it will tell you that you can’t select this planet due to being affiliated with another faction.
Pick a (starter) job. Jobs are sorted so that jobs which are easier to start with on your planet come up first. They are labelled with suitability: None/Poor/Average/Rich resources, No/Low/Moderate/High fertility (if applicable) and Too Close/Extreme/Far/Moderate/Near CX availability. Too Close is there because intra-system operations are very STL Fuel intensive.